


advent calendar

by edgeofthewall



Series: bellarke tumblr prompts [6]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-09
Updated: 2015-03-09
Packaged: 2018-03-17 01:33:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3510224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edgeofthewall/pseuds/edgeofthewall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>bellamy learns that clarke is full of surprises. answer for the prompt: "teach me how to play?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	advent calendar

Being with Clarke reminded him of those advent calendars his mom would give him for Christmas before money got too tight to give presents, the kind with the cheap tasting chocolate or the useless little trinkets that would break within minutes of him opening it. 

He'd loved those advent calendars. There was something so thrilling about counting down until Christmas by opening something new everyday, never knowing what he was going to find behind the little punch out cardboard hole. He loved the surprise of it all.

Dating Clarke was like that in a way, only instead of counting down until a certain day, he was happily counting the months they'd been together.

* * *

It was raining the first time they met, something that was a borderline downpour, and she'd frozen underneath an awning on the busy New York City streets, paying no mind to the people who were angrily swerving around her. Clutched to her chest was a sketchbook.

Bellamy was clearing a table inside the coffee shop, one of his three jobs, when he looked up. A girl was there, blonde hair matted to her head from the rain, and glaring at the storm as if it had personally offended her. Knowing his boss would be out soon to ask her to keep moving, and knowing he'd be a lot meaner, Bellamy poked his head out of the entrance.

"Ma'am? I'm going to have to ask you to stop blocking the pedestrian traffic in front of the shop."

Her head whipped around so quickly that he thought maybe she'd turned it around completely like the Exorcist or some shit like that, and his theory wasn't disproven by how piercing her blue eyes were. "I don't have a bag, and if this book gets wet, I fail for the semester." She waved her sketchbook for effect, and grumbling to himself, he ducked back into the coffee shop, before returning a few moments later with an umbrella.

"Here."

The girl eyed the umbrella warily, and Bellamy rolled his eyes, pushing the umbrella closer to her. "What, black not your color? Just take it. And maybe next time, bring a bag."

Wordlessly, the girl took the umbrella, opening it up and disappearing back into the crowd of people without a single word, not even a thank you.

Bellamy wondered how quickly he could run to his car when his shift ended and how soaked he'd get in the process.

* * *

 

She came back the next day, much to Bellamy's surprise, walking into the shop with his umbrella in hand.

"I'm sorry I dashed off last time," she said, sitting the umbrella on the counter, and a folded piece of paper next to it. "My sketch was due, and I was late. But I got an A."

She pointed to the piece of paper, and Bellamy opened it, surprised when he was met with a sketch of his sister's face.

"How did you-"

"Octavia offers her face for the classes sometimes. She has excellent jaw structure, makes for a great sketch. She told me you were her brother. She recognized the umbrella." What looks like her attempt at a smile falls onto the girl's face, and Bellamy wonders what happened to make it so hard for her to smile.

Glancing back at the sketch again, he noticed her signature. Clarke Griffin. Underneath it was her phone number, and when he lifted his head to ask about it, she was already walking away, halfway out the store before he could call out to her.

He didn't know it yet, but that was the first in a long line of surprises, the beginning of his advent calendar.

* * *

 

After quite a few dates, and an awkward conversation full of nervous laughter and shy smiles about whether or not they were officially together (they decided they were), Bellamy had learned quite a few things about Clarke Griffin. She wasn't just a good artist, but incredibly intelligent as well. She noticed patterns where others didn't. She didn't trust easily. She used to want to be a doctor but decided to give it up after the best medicine couldn't save her best friend Wells from cancer.

That was when he learned not all the surprises were good. He learned about her father, about her mother's part in his death, about how she'd had one too many martinis to be driving that night. He figured out how to calm her down when she woke up in the middle of the night, crying and breathing heavily as she pulled herself from her nightmares. She learned to do the same, learned that the way to comfort him was to tell him Octavia was safe, and he hadn't failed her.

Clarke Griffin offered him so many surprises, and he thought maybe she'd run out of them eventually, but one thing he'd learned about her was that she loved to prove people wrong.

* * *

 

Bellamy woke up to an empty bed at three in the morning, and his first instinct was to panic. He hadn't slept without Clarke beside him for months, and when he felt how the sheets had gone cold, indicating she'd been gone for quite awhile, his mind immediately starts to rush through every terrible scenario.

But the window was open, and music drifted through it, immediately comforting him.

Bellamy climbed out of bed, not bothering to grab a shirt as he crossed to the window, poking his head out to find Clarke sitting on the flat roof outside the window, wearing nothing but one of his shirts. That somehow didn't distract him, however, instead focusing on the guitar in her hands.

"Hey, you."

Clarke jumped, whipping her head around. "Shit, sorry. Did I wake you up? I couldn't sleep."

Bellamy nodded in understanding, carefully climbing out onto the roof with her. They normally spent their nights at his place, but they were at Clarke's for once, in her childhood home, visiting her mother. He couldn't imagine she'd be able to sleep.

"M'okay. I didn't know....?" He trailed off, waving a hand at the guitar as he settled across from her.

Clarke shrugged, absently playing a C major chord, the open, full tone of it feeling like a comfort to her unsettled stomach. Being home did that to her. "I left the guitar here when I moved out. Figured I'd give it a try."

She looked a little embarrassed, and knowing Clarke, it was shame at the idea of leaving something behind, of giving up and not sticking with it. Bellamy wished, in that moment, he could explain to her what seeing her out here did to him. He wished he could explain how beautiful she was with the smudged eyeliner she'd forgotten to take off before bed and the curls matted with sleep and sex, how every time he learned something new about her it only reaffirmed that he would never find someone like her again.

But Bellamy didn't have the words for feelings like that, except maybe three, and those felt a bit out of place in the confines of her home, the home that she resented.

Instead, he held out his hands as he leaned in to press a lingering kiss to her temple.

"Teach me how to play?"

His fingers were awkward on the strings, and her laugh was like music, and Bellamy was in love.

**Author's Note:**

> i was so excited to fill this prompt, and i hope you all like it :) thank you for your feedback as always!


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